See Gabe Newell's D.I.C.E. Keynote

Valve CEO Gabe Newell took the stage with director JJ Abrams yesterday, where they had a tongue-in-cheek debate on whether films or games were the best way to tell stories. Newell was back today, with a solo talk.

Gabe Newell's Keynote discussed structural changes going forward in the games industry. He announced up front it wouldn’t include any product announcements (sorry Half-Life fans), but instead wanted to focus on changing the way of how we think of a game. Newell addressed as more services emerge on the internet, the PC will have a natural progression into our living rooms and have to face the challenges of user integration.

He also discussed how games are evolving and the questions that must be asked about what makes a good game and how to invest development resources. He said while Valve was making the Half-Life series, a question they often asked was the way the game was responding to the player's actions or status. That’s why in Half-Life 2, the developers worked to make sure characters were looking properly at players in three dimensional space.

While a good time was spent focusing on the single player experience, Newell addressed how differently they had to approach multiplayer games and the value people get out of them. He discussed auction houses, marketplaces, the free-to-play model, and the explosion of user generated content. “Our customers have defeated us…not by a little, but a by a lot,” Newell says. “They’re building content that's just as good or better than what we're building…at a spectacular rate.” Maximizing user productivity was a big part of his talk as was discovering ways to reward the community with more engagement.

Take a look at his speech below.

For the uninitiated, D.I.C.E. Summit (design, innovate, communicate, entertain) is an annual event where game developers, scholars, and entertainers gather in Las Vegas to present new ideas to attendees. Think TED Talks with a focus on interactive entertainment, and you're on the right track. This year marks the 12th time the event has been held.

That was an interesting talk. I particularly liked how he mentioned that what they're doing isn't just what's best for Valve itself, but for the community as a whole, specifically the way they're looking into alternate input devices and that they're not looking to sell new hardware like that themselves, but they'll do it if no one else will.

...mod take a chill pill... like 4 or 5 comments have been deleted because of a harmless fat joke. Talk about a free speech. I think the Rain Queen is Gabe's private account on here and he's just going around being an *** lol ;)

You forgot to mention a few other things of what he said:
That he pushes publishers to allow modding,and in fact to allow players to sell mods through Steam,so they can generate more profit. The man wants modding to be monetized.
He also said he is looking for the use of Streaming technology for the "Steambox",that Valve isn't going to produce and sell it itself,but will instead license 3rd parties,and that it will come with new input hardware designe by Valve,and that there will be 3 choices,the Good the Better and the Best,and that the 'Good' choice is a PC with the same power as the consoles.

...And of course, people want HL3. I think Valve should just move on and make something completely different. We already have about six Half-Life games, why would you want another? It'll end up being the same silent protagonist wielding a crowbar with sketchy physics-based puzzles.

I'm sort of being dickish, but I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Half-Life.